It was about last Thursday that I said I would not do another 40-minute hangboard routine. That sentiment lasted until yesterday when I conceived of a 40-minute routine that would be harder. So, It sucked. But I’m psyched I did it. I did actually do it too. And I’m going to hold up this routine as my gnastiest to date. It was supremely gnasty and I believe it represents significant improvement in my endurance or, at least, in my hangboarding capacity.

I went for the 40-minute set yesterday. It was long. It was more than I care to do again. Music helped. My skin started to fall apart causing me to miss an early set taping a tear on my right ring finger. That’s ok – I enjoyed the remaining 92 sets. Total time hanging was 15:18. By the time a pump started in my forearms, around minute 28, I was super warmed up; so it wasn’t the sharp, searing kind of pump. It was manageable. There never was much doubt I would finish. I planned this routine to span only 1.5 sine periods over its entirety. That meant back-to-back sets on constant holds. This turned out to be really enjoyable, giving me some time to acclimate in a single position.

Yesterday’s hangboard session was good stuff. Finally my plan is coming together. Small holds felt small. Big holds felt pumpy. I’m getting a practical sense for how to combine varying durations and intensities to simulate what feels like a full-length sport route. So I’m getting pumped. And my performance, in these sets anyway, is improving, specifically and noticeably.

It’s Monday but this hangboard set is from Thursday. It was a bit scary. Being my third consecutive day of hangboard sets, plus climbing, my fingers were feeling breakable. Note to self: warm up better (dumbass). And this set was generally difficult to get through. I was late on a few starts. On a fresh day, however, this same program would probably be no problem.

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I had another go at an 18-minute hangboard routine yesterday. It was rad. That is, I finished it this time, and it felt not like death. My skin felt bad, I’m sure from a proper Tuesday at the Shed, but most of that went away after ~6 minutes. This was not a majorly pumpy ordeal to my surprise. There was moderate pumpination happening but nothing out of control. The short load/small hold sets felt easy while the long load/big hold sets were grueling – an observation I will take into account for today’s session.

Yesterday’s hangboard session went down before I bounced over to the Shed for some proper fitness. I had intended to use the few minutes planned for hangs as a warm up. Instead I printed an 18-minute routine that shut me down at ~14:20. Clearly I am the master of my own impulses.

This Excel workout generator now has a column for planning hold combinations. I added a rating scale for hold difficulty and mapped those values to a function that inversely corresponds to hang duration. There are some parameters that need tweaking.

Since the Superbowl is lame I got some hangboarding in yesterday. This was my second go at a 9-minute set and it felt way less pumpy than the first. I did tweak the intervals a bit, increasing both loads and rests a touch, but I do not believe that is what made this seem less endurance-y-ish™. Rather, my recent focus on routes and the newness of these long sets has me improving quickly for the first little bit here, I believe. There are tons of opportunities for on-the-fly efficiency tweaking within the 9 minutes these sets cover and route guys are specialized in this skill. Some medium 2-finger and mono work even got incorporated toward the end. Which reminds me to remind me: put small holds in the sine valleys, not on the peaks (dumbass).

Right now I’m just kinda using whatever holds I want during a set but I’ll figure out recording for that. Not recording would be like climbing a route and giving no consideration for the size of the holds – which sounded super stupid in my head but now that sounds rad.

This was harder than I expected. Which I expected. I’m thinking I’ll increase load and rest intervals and stay in the 9 minute range for a spell. I was switching holds as I pleased but am thinking of a way to apply a function to that as well. Since Google Docs butchered my Excel effort I’ll explain: I put a function to load/rest intervals, in this case a sine curve, for a continuous hangboard routine, in this case 9 minutes.